cover image ARTS OF DIPLOMACY: Lewis & Clark's Indian Collection

ARTS OF DIPLOMACY: Lewis & Clark's Indian Collection

Castle McLaughlin, Erin Hasinoff, . . Univ. of Washington, $60 (228pp) ISBN 978-0-87365-844-7

As the bicentennial years of the Lewis and Clark expedition approach we can expect to be inundated with any number of books, articles and television programs about the "Corps of Discovery," but it is doubtful than any will prove more insightful and thought provoking than McLaughlin's groundbreaking study. Associate curator of Native American Ethnography at the Peabody Museum, McLaughlin takes a multidisciplinary approach centering on the collection of objects acquired from native tribes during the expedition. Even if the book did nothing more than present and describe these fascinating objects—which it does with lush and painstaking thoroughness in text and in 195 illustrations (150 in color)—it would be of great appeal to neophytes and experts alike. Some of the objects depicted, like the extraordinary ceremonial raven bustles, are as impressive in themselves as anything our continent has produced. But through them McLaughlin, along with some guest essayists, is able to describe both the voyage and its milieu in fresh and surprising ways. The America from which Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark was a democracy in its fragile infancy; the tribes, McLaughlin illustrates, including the Mandan and Sioux, were not yet conquered peoples but vital actors in a thriving and interdependent cultural economy. In the complex interaction between the expedition and the peoples they met, the exchange of objects could have numerous meanings, which are explored here with great nuance and subtlety; their eventual status as "museum" objects is also discussed. At various points, this narrative is interleaved with panel pages in which material aspects such as cedar bark and glass beads are explored more fully, and also, most usefully, contemporary native artisans not only discuss their crafts but react to the implications of McLaughlin's ideas. Readers will want to do the same. (Mar.)